Wikileaks Likely Has Nothing To Do With Tribal Leader Deaths

Though the powers that be would have you believe that Wikileaks and their recent document release are to blame for a recent rash of tribal leader killings in Afghanistan, on closer look it seems highly unlikely that the two have anything to do with one another. One can read in Newsweek or in The New York Post that:

the Taliban has already begun to retaliate against Afghan collaborators named in more than 90,000 secret U.S. files released by a whistleblower website

and how...

over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

What isn't made clear, and probably for very good reason, is what the execution has to do with the Wikileaks documents. I found another article which sort of filled in the details that Newsweek and The New York Post chose to leave out.

In an article originally from Asia World News that I found on Earthtimes, some added details are given around the events. Wikileaks however is never mentioned in the article. Were the events simply lifted and blamed on Wikileaks to fit the propaganda purposes of the Pentagon? Perhaps. But there is more. It is hard to imagine how the deaths could be connected to Wikileaks for two reasons. The Wikileaks documents came out on Sunday, the 25th of July. According to the article:

70 tribal elders in Panwayi district had received death threats unless they leave the country within five days.

The tribal leader, Khalifa Abdullah, who was recently killed, and mentioned in Newsweek as being a result of Wikileaks, was killed on Friday. Assuming they did give him five days, that would mean the same day Wikileaks released their material the Taliban was in a position to scourge through it all in english and find his name and issue the letters and have them arrive the same day so that the leaders would have their five days before the killing would begin. Not satisfied? There's still more...

At the very end of the article which doesn't mention Wikileaks at all, another more logical reason is given for the murders:

NATO said earlier this month that Taliban chief Mullah Omar had sent to his followers a list of tribal leaders to kill.

A month ago? What can that possibly have to do with the Wikileaks Afghan Diary?
If you wish you can also read another article from more than a month ago which talks of the Taliban assassinations as an ongoing event in the region way before Wikileaks was even making news.
It seems obvious to me that the Pentagon and their propaganda artists in the mainstream media have done a bit of cut and paste to make this suddenly all the fault of Wikileaks. Nice smear campaign.